New collaboration aims to advance therapeutics
by rapidly funding promising, early-stage research

Cambridge, MA and New York, NY – October 10,
2017 - The Broad Institute of MIT and Harvard and Deerfield Management
announced today the launch of a first-of-its-kind research partnership, aimed
at solving complex, early-stage therapeutic challenges related to serious unmet
medical needs.

The arrangement is
unique in two respects. First, a major investment firm is partnering with an
academic research institution to pursue transformative, early-stage
therapeutics research-- through a plan that includes funding for early-stage
academic research followed by support to create new entities to develop
therapies based on the most promising projects. Second, Deerfield Management
will dedicate any of its profits from a successful therapeutic earned by its
Healthcare Innovations Fund to its philanthropic arm, the Deerfield Foundation,
which supports healthcare initiatives that benefit children and adults in
underserved communities and healthcare innovation.

In this new
partnership, Deerfield will commit more than $50 million to the advancement of
therapeutic research projects at the Broad Institute over an initial period of
five years. In addition, Deerfield is prepared to provide significant
additional resources to advance the development of highly-promising targets
generated as part of the collaboration.

“Over the last few
years, Broad Institute researchers have developed a number of unprecedented
biological insights and therapeutic hypotheses that are early-stage but
potentially transformative,” said James Flynn, Managing Partner of Deerfield.
“Moving these hypotheses from the lab toward the clinic requires significant
financial resources to build on work launched by philanthropy and grants, and
are not yet far enough along to attract traditional venture funding or
pharmaceutical collaborations. We are prepared to fund and develop these
projects so Broad researchers can immediately pursue bold ideas, and have
confidence that real breakthroughs will have additional support to move toward
clinical success.”

This partnership
follows the Broad Institute’s principles
for disseminating scientific innovations, which aim to ensure that
others can build on scientific advances made by the Broad community to maximize
the benefit for human health. Knowledge and intellectual property developed
will be shared widely with other academic and non-profit research institutions,
and may also be made available for commercial therapeutic development.

“Over the last decade, scientific advances
have made it possible to rapidly understand the biological basis of disease at
unprecedented resolution,” said Eric S. Lander, president and founding director
of the Broad Institute. “The challenge now is to develop ways to speed the
process of turning these scientific insights into therapies that benefit
patients.”

“We are thrilled to work with Deerfield
Management, which is aligned with our institutional mission and values,” said
Issi Rozen, chief business officer at the Broad Institute. “This collaboration
will allow our researchers to proceed with high-impact work that will benefit
the patient in the long-term.”

About
DeerfieldDeerfield is an investment management firm
committed to advancing healthcare through investment, information and
philanthropy.

For more information, please visit
www.deerfield.com

About
the Broad Institute of MIT and Harvard

Broad Institute of MIT and Harvard was
launched in 2004 to empower this generation of creative scientists to transform
medicine. The Broad Institute seeks to describe all the molecular components of
life and their connections; discover the molecular basis of major human
diseases; develop effective new approaches to diagnostics and therapeutics; and
disseminate discoveries, tools, methods, and data openly to the entire
scientific community.

Founded by MIT, Harvard, Harvard-affiliated
hospitals, and the visionary Los Angeles philanthropists Eli and Edythe L.
Broad, the Broad Institute includes faculty, professional staff, and students
from throughout the MIT and Harvard biomedical research communities and beyond,
with collaborations spanning over a hundred private and public institutions in
more than 40 countries worldwide. For further information about the Broad
Institute, go to http://www.broadinstitute.org.